The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan [Hardcover]

Professor John Ehrman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 2005

During the Reagan years, Americans witnessed an extraordinary array of changes, from major technological advances to sweeping revisions of the tax code to the deregulation of major industries and the advent of the culture wars. America emerged from the decade completely transformed: political and social arrangements derived from post–World War II liberalism had given way to the highly competitive, fast-changing, technology-driven society we know today.
In The Eighties, John Ehrman tracks this transformation in the context of Ronald Reagan’s policies and convictions and examines the broader trends that enabled Reagan to achieve so much of his agenda. At a time when most Americans remained fairly centrist in their political commitments, Reagan was able to shift policy toward the right by building support for a few key policies. His gradualist approach met with little opposition from Democrats, who failed to mount a coherent response. Based on a broad range of primary source material, The Eighties offers an accessible and balanced account of a watershed decade in American history.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Ehrman’s Eighties is a strikingly successful book and a pleasure to read—it’s scrupulously fair-minded, equally nuanced and perceptive in its discussion of cultural and political matters—and (above all) it provides a lucid, convincing, enormously valuable picture of the Reagan administration. Many (probably most) thoughtful, educated Americans still haven’t got a clue who Reagan was, what he did, and why he became and remains a revered figure in this country. They need to read Ehrman, the sooner the better.”—David Gelernter, Yale University

“In the 1980s, America moved Right, Left, and forward at the same time. Ehrman examines the currents and crosscurrents of this remarkable era with clarity and judiciousness. A commendable book.”—George H. Nash, author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945

“John Ehrman combines meticulous research, intellectual honesty, originality, and common sense to produce an interpretation of the Reagan era that is illuminating, refreshing, and highly readable.”--Glen Jeansonne, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Book Description

America emerged from the Reagan years transformed—socially, politically, technologically, economically. In this book John Ehrman tracks the extraordinary changes of the 1980s in the context of Ronald Reagan’s policies and convictions, providing a balanced portrait of a president and of the watershed decade over which he presided.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (March 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300106629
• ISBN-13: 978-0300106626
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,437,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well worth a read, April 8, 2005

By 

W. Weber (Fairfax, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (Hardcover)

Complexities are best understood from numerous points of view. Ehrman's The Eighties provides both a valuable and favorable perspective on a decade of immense complexity. As his subtitle suggests, Ehrman well-researched and well-written book gives Reagan significant credit for changing around US domestic affairs. He presents in detail how Reagan's conservative ideology and his pragmatic political acumen shaped politics and budgetary policy at the national level. One wishes he had looked more closely at the second order effects of Reagan's limited government spending, particularly federal-state relations and law and order issues. While rendering numerous unfavorable judgments of Reagan's Democratic opponents, the major negatives he finds in Reagan administration are limited largely to the Iran-Contra affair. Ehrman gives Reagan an undeserved pass on his historic budgetary deficits and fails to mention the unsuccessful 1982 intervention in Lebanon while noting the public support Reagan received for sending troops into Grenada. Still, The Eighties makes for an interesting and educational read two decades later when once again federal tax rates are lower, defense spending is up, and deficits are growing but, as Ehrman notes, the tone of political discourse is much harsher.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps too non-judgemental, June 1, 2005

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (Hardcover)

Though the title of his book suggests the possibility of narrative sweep it is in fact a more modestly targeted effort. For the most part Mr. Ehrman treats the '80s as a transitional era, as America went from a failing industrial economy to the exuberant information economy of the '90s and from a near universal acceptance of liberal New Deal/Great Society orthodoxy to the widespread belief, even among Third Way Democrats, in conservative approaches to social problems and the use of free market solutions to provide social services and fuel economic growth. Combined with for the most part ignoring foreign affairs this enables him to take a more sober look at Ronald Reagan than do many of the reverent analysts on the Right and the hysterical critics on the Left. In our hyperpartisan era, such dispassion is somewhat refreshing, but it does seem to make Mr. Ehrman overly cautious in offering assessments, as if giving President Reagan much credit for anything would betray an unforgivable bias. Too often that leads to a certain sense in the book that the changes that took place in the '80s were inevitable and Mr. Reagan just happened to be in office while they went on around him. Surely there's a middle ground between claiming that the Gipper walked on water and pretending that a second Jimmy Carter term, would have been indistinguishable from Reagan's first?

That said, there's one theme of the book that Mr. Ehrman handles especially well, a leitmotif that he traces through the decade to devastating effect: the complete failure of liberalism generally and the Democrats in particular to come to grips with the fact that conservatism was being re-established as a credible political philosophy in America, perhaps even its dominant one. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill; Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd; presidential candidates Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis; pundits and academics like Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, Paul Kennedy, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; are all portrayed as just flailing around, denying by turns the importance of Reagan's victory, the potential that Reaganomics could revive the economy, the possibility of prevailing in the Cold War, even the future of America. The occasional reformist voice on the Left--a Gary Hart or Ira Magaziner--was overwhelmed as: "Liberal intellectuals showed themselves still beset with economic anxieties and unable to break free from past perspectives, fear of foreigners [mostly Japan and the Soviets], or unproductive abstractions." Mr. Ehrman depicts the '80s, quite accurately, as a lost decade for liberalism. Many of its legislative achievements and the changes it had brought to institutions endured at decade's end, but they'd lost their intellectual justification. Significantly, when a Democrat did finally win back the presidency, it was a Southern moderate who ran against liberalism as much as against conservatism and still only managed 43% of the vote. Even Bill Clinton though seems not to have learned this lesson and by governing to the Left in his first two years lost long term control of Congress for the Democrats for the first time since the Great Depression and the party proceeded to nominate two garden variety liberals, Al Gore and John Kerry, who lost to George W. Bush, who ran well to the Right of where Ronald Reagan had governed. It will be possible for succeeding authors to Mr. Ehrman's theme into the '90s and well into the '00s. this gives the book an enduring significance, despite its weaknesses.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the Definitive Work on a Transforming Decade, June 16, 2005

By 

Nicholas Dujmovic (Vienna, Virginia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (Hardcover)

John Ehrman, whose 'Rise of Neoconservatism' a decade ago is still the essential work on the subject, has returned with the single book one needs to understand the 1980s. His thesis is that Ronald Reagan was a "transformational President" who both reflected and defined his times and thereby indelibly put his stamp on American civil and cultural life in a way that affects us still and will continue to do so for years to come.

'The Eighties' is a balanced, well-researched, engaging, and ultimately persuasive book. Reagan's success, Ehrman argues, was based on two factors; first, Reagan understood and appealled to the natural and moderate conservatism inherent in American politics. Ehrman's case is that Reaganism, despite the shrillness of its critics, turned out to be a moderate conservatism of the center rather than the extremist caricature touted by the left. Second, Reagan was helped immensely by the ineptness of his opponents and their failure to understand America's conservative centrism; to this day, the Democratic party has not managed to come up with a coherent answer to Reagan.

Ehrman is particularly strong describing broad trends without becoming overly dry or academic. His description of the origins of the "culture wars" is very good, as is his discussion of the increasing irrelevance of academia. His introduction contains the clearest and most concise definitions of liberalism and conservatism I have seen. There is a withering assessment of Michael Dukakis as the Democrats' candidate of desperation in the 1988 election against Reagan's Vice President (some guy named Bush, who was elected in a landslide as a proxy for a third Reagan term).

Above all, Ehrman's objectivity prevents 'The Eighties' from becoming a hagiography of Reagan--which is why a few on the far right don't like it. The author faces squarely Reagan's shortcomings, especially his managerial style. But rather than add to the plethora of biographic treatments of the 40th president, Ehrman has wisely focused on how Reagan changed American political life immutably. Whether it's welfare reform, abandonment of confiscatory taxes, or the death of Clinton's health care, we have to give Reagan credit--and, for many of us, he gets our thanks as well.